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Horace A.W. Tabor, "Silver King" and Baby Doe Tabor

Guest post by: Linda Burson

Article Overview: Horace Tabor is a true "rags-to-riches-to-rags" story of Colorado's Silver King of the late 1800s. Though it shows the pioneer spirit that made this country great, it also gives us lessons in persistence, dedication, devotion and determination to transcend all obstacles to reach a specific goal in life -- that ever-elusive "pot of gold (in this case 'silver') at the end of the rainbow. Because in March we celebrate St. Patrick's day, and the fact that Horace's wife, Baby Doe Tabor, is of Irish heritage, makes this a most fitting article for Mazon's March 2011 newsletter, Building Bridges. Please enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching it.

Horace A.W. Tabor, "Silver King" and Baby Doe Tabor

Horace Tabor, trained as a stone mason, was 19 years old in 1849 when he left his home in Vermont to work in stone quarries in Massachusetts and Maine. In 1855, he joined anti-slavery settlers to populate the Kansas territory and began farming land along Deep Creek in Kansas, (what today is still called "Tabor Valley"). He returned briefly to Maine in early 1857 to marry 24-year-old Augusta Pierce, a daughter of his former employer. They travelled back to Kansas where they spent the next two years trying to make farming productive. In 1859, stories of gold discovered in the west Kansas Territory (now Colorado) caused Horace, Augusta, their infant son (Maxcy) and two old friends, to walk for six weeks across desolate landscape to Denver in search of gold. In 1861, they moved to Buckskin Joe, Colorado to run a general store, and a few months later relocated to Oro City where Horace continued to search for gold. During July 1877 veins of silver were found in Leadville, causing Horace and Augusta to move to a large log cabin in Leadville where they continued as storekeepers and tending the post office for the area. By January 1878, the population of the Leadville mining camp was 6,000,made up of seventy cabins, shanties and tents. While Horace and Augusta werestruggling financially with the others, he would make grubstake arrangements with miners (provisioned for free in return for a share in the ownership of anything they might find). In 1878, two immigrant prospectors whom he provisioned suddenly and almost overnight on May 3, 1878, earned Horace (then 47)and Augusta one-third ownership of the Little Pittsburgh mine -- the first of many mines he would own. After the bonanza strike of the Little Pittsburgh, everything Horace touchedturned to sparkling silver and untold riches, and he became known as the "Silver King." During 1878 he expanded to iron mines, gold mines, silver mines, placer mines, smelters, irrigating canals, toll roads, railroads, copper land in Texas, grazing land in Colorado, mahogany forests in Honduras and real estate in Leadville, Denver and Chicago. Horace was elected mayor of Leadville in 1878, was its first postmaster, organized its first bank, built a building to house the Tabor Hose Company (for which he had given the hose carriage) and the equipment of the Tabor Light Calvary (which he also organized), and built Leadville's Tabor Opera House (which opened in November 1879). In partnership with Marshall Field of Chicago, he bought the Crysolite mine along with others; shortly afterward these mines yielded three million dollars and Horace eventually sold out his share for $1.5 million. By the end of 1879, the total yield from his consolidated company was four million dollars and he later sold his interest for one million dollars. The Chrysolite mine was said to have been "salted" by a swindler before Horace purchased it; when he found out, Horace ordered his crew to "keep on sinking" the mining shaft - at ten feet more they broke into a three million dollar treasure chest of carbonate ore! It was in 1879 that he bought the Matchless mine for over $117,000 and purchased half-interest in the First National Bank in Denver.

Their sudden wealth and fame did not sit well with Augusta, who for years had been accustomed to hard work and frugal living. She continued to live as before but now in a mansion in Denver. Although Horace and Augusta entertained society, she shunned the elaborate life and continued to live frugally, dress modestly, refused to live in the master bedroom upstairs but in the servant's quarters off the kitchen of their home. She scrubbed her own floors, did their own laundry and cooking, and kept a cow tethered on the front lawn and milked it herself. She had a sharp tongue, belittling Horace for his generosity and spontaneous gifts. Augusta's reaction to their good fortune caused a split in their marriage, as it humiliated Horace in his current position as Colorado's Lieutenant Governor (1878-1884), and he began to spend much time away, expanding his business, making friends of his own, building and investing his wealth where he saw fit, making many friends along the way. He loved to live an extravagant lifestyle with his wealth, but his generosity and kindness to others never faltered, and he enjoyed helping others.Yet, he was a lonely man. It was at this time of his life, that he met a beautiful young divorcee (26 years younger than himself), Baby Doe in the lobby of his Leadville Clarendon hotel in 1879. It was love at first sight for both of them.

Baby Doe (nicknamed by the area miners because of her good looks, sharp wit and outgoing personality), was the daughter of a shopkeeper in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. At 22, she married Harvey Doe, Jr. (23) in Oshkosh in June 1877. He was a handsome but spoiled son of Oshkosh's wealthy Colonel William Harvey Doewho hadmining interests in Central City, Colorado. As a wedding gift, Col. Doe gave them control of his Fourth of July gold mine, in Central City, with the promise of more if they made good with that mine. After just three weeks in Central City, Baby Doe learned that her young husband was no miner, nor did he have the pioneer ambition it took to survive there. He took various jobs, enough only to buy a little food. In fear of losing what little they had been given, Baby Doe donned miner's clothes and gear in attempts to make the mine profitable. Harvey drifted from job to job and camp to camp, borrowing money to the point of desperation, facing legal judgments for money he could not repay. He spent much of histime in bars (not that he drank but found people to sympathize with him). Baby Doe lived alone in destitute conditions for two years and suffered great hardship with the birth of a stillborn son in July 1879 (attended by only a midwife). She was befriended by a young local store owner, Jake Sandelowsky, who provided food and merchandise to her. When Baby Doe finally divorced Harvey in March 1881 for non-support and desertion, Jake encouraged her to move to Leadville to start a new life in that growing community.

Shortly after meeting and becoming society's gossip headlines, Horace and Baby Doe immersed themselves in the planning and building of the famed 5-story Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver which opened on September 5, 1881. During this time, Horace continually requested a divorce from Augusta, but she refused pointblank on the grounds that a divorce was a lasting disgrace and stigma. Then, Horace secretly divorced Augusta in the summer of 1882 in Durango, Colorado and wed Baby Doe in a private ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri that September. In January 1883, Augusta sued for divorce accepting as settlement their house, another apartment house, a quarter of a million dollars worth of mining stock, including one-half interest in a mine above Aspen. On January 27, 1883, Horace, then 52, accepted a 30-day term as Colorado Senator (completing an outgoing senator's term). During this time in Washington, DC, Horace and Baby Doe had a lavish and historic wedding. They returned to Denver where they continued to live an extravagant lifestyle, though Baby Doe was continually snubbed by women's social circles because of the circumstances surrounding Horace's divorce from Augusta.

Baby Doe (now known as the "Silver Queen") and Horace's first daughter was born July 13 1884. Their happy, luxurious life continued for the next ten years. Investments spread, the Matchless continued to produce silver(often running as high as $80,000/month -- some estimates were $10,000 per day!). He poured untold sums into the coffers of the Colorado Republican party for which he never got the least political consideration that he hoped for. Horace ran for Colorado governor in 1884, 1886 and 1888 without success. Baby Doe still had no real friends in Denver and had received no social invitations in Denver. A son born in October 1888 sadly lived only for a few hours. In December 1889, another daughter was born. Around this time, the Tabor mines had fallen off in output, but the Matchless was still holding up. Some other investments had not turned out as anticipated, but still hopeful, they continued to live the same lavish scale, with Horace mortaging the Tabor Block and Opera House in Denver.

Then, tragedy came with the Silver Crash of 1893 -- the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act signed by President Grover Cleveland to demonetize silver in order to save the value of gold. (Until the Great Depression, the Silver Panic of 1893 was considered the worst depression the United States had ever experienced.) Almost overnight, the richest people in Colorado became the poorest. All of Horace's mines were worthless, including the Matchless! Horace's other holdings, it turned out, were literally only on paper and worthless. He had been duped or cheated by associates and friends without realizing it, and some real estate was already mortgaged and he mortgaged the rest. Ten Denver banks failed in three days during July, and their cash went when the banks crashed. Gradually they had no money coming in and could not meet payments on mortgages; banks wouldn't loan any more money to them and properties fell on the foreclosure block. They thought their wealth was unending, and had no type of savings to sustain them. Before their home was taken, the Tabor Block in Denver and all the Leadville properties fell. What wasn't taken for mortgages went for unpaid taxes. Neither family nor friends, were willing to help them as they had no means of repaying anyone -- this, for a man whom had given so much of his wealth and time and life to Denver and the mining communities of Colorado. When the house was taken, they lived in cheap little rooms in West Denver where Baby Doe did all the cooking, washing, ironing and sewing from early morning to late at night to make her husband and children presentable for meetings and school. Their finances went from bad to worse, but Horace and Baby Doe held their heads high knowing their luck was bound to change for the better.

Horace was over 65 when he took a job wheeling slag at the smelter in Leadville for $3 per day. The Matchless was shut down, and water filled the shafts and drifts. What was spent only a few years prior on the children's trinkets and toys would have now kept the family in groceries for a month! Then in 1898 a senator-friend from Leadville succeeded in getting President McKinley to appoint Horace postmaster of Denver, and they moved to a two-room apartment at the Windsor Hotel. He was very grateful and pleased with his position and regular routine of his job and settled into being a quiet wage-earner and family man. They economized to live on $3,500 per year, a sum he had lost many times on one hand of poker. And his lunch was a sandwich at his desk. In 1899 Horace fell violently ill with appendicitis. For seven days and nights, Baby Doe was constantly at his bedside. In his last words to Baby Doe he said, "Never let the Matchless go, if I die. It will make millions again when silver comes back." His death on the morning of April 10, 1899 left a huge hole in Baby Doe's heart and grief overcame her. With help from one loyal sister, she bought back the Matchless at a sheriff's sale in July 1901 and planned to move into the mine's old supply shack with her daughters. Her oldest daughter, Lillie (now grown) rebelled against this and ran away to Oshkosh disowning the Tabor name forever. Her youngest daughter was enthused at the thought of becoming rich again and stayed at the mine until she left for Chicago to seek a writing career. Baby Doe was only 45 years old when Horace died, and still having her beauty and energy, could have remarried, but chose instead to seek the fortune Horace promised her was in the Matchless. She lived out her days as a recluse, dressing in a tattered black skirt, black shirt and black shoelace tied in little knots as a necklace around her neck. Fortune never returned. She lived alone in the tiny one-room ruined shack until 1935 when, at age 81, she ran out of firewood during a long blizzard and was found frozen to death two weeks later on the floor of her shack.

Matchless mine is now a summertime Leadville tourist attraction. The historic Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver was demolished in 1964. The Tabor Opera House in Leadville is currently seeking funds to restore it as a historical site. The original Tabor general store has been moved from Buckskin Joe, CO to the Bucksin Joe Theme Park near Canyon City, CO.

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